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ikhet_sekhmetThe book's been recalled by another borrower, so I'm just going to take some quick notes on things of interest to me.
The twelve hours spent by the sun in the Duat are described in the Underworld Books found in the Valley of the Kings. Quirke describes an appearance by Sekhmet: "In the ninth and tenth hours too, the sun rests 'in his cavern'. Like the second hour, the ninth bears the name 'protector of her lord', while the tenth is 'the raging one, who boils alive the rebel'. As the name suggests, the damned receive their final punishment here, from eight lion-headed aspects of Sekhmet '(Divine) Fury' who have to 'allot the eye of Horus to the one in the Underworld'. There follow eight 'images made by Horus' to destroy the bodies of the foe." There's an accompanying illustration in which: "... lion-headed goddesses pour fire on the bodies of the evil in sand pits." (p 50)
On the sed festival of Amenhotep III, and the statues in his funerary temple: "For Amenhotep III the incantations to appease the Furious Goddess, Sekhmet, at the end of the year became the mightiest litany ever sung, a chorus of perhaps 730 images of the goddess. These depict her as a lion-headed woman holding the sceptre of flourishing and the sign of life, in half of them seated, in the other half standing." (p 150)
Caption on p 32: "Stela showing a woman and her daughter offering to a lion-headed goddess named in the hieroglyphic inscription as Mestjet, 'eye of Ra'. This is the only evidence for the name, but the depiction of the 'eye of Ra' as lion-headed goddess is widely attested."
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Quirke, Stephen. The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt. Thames and Hudson, London, 2001.
The twelve hours spent by the sun in the Duat are described in the Underworld Books found in the Valley of the Kings. Quirke describes an appearance by Sekhmet: "In the ninth and tenth hours too, the sun rests 'in his cavern'. Like the second hour, the ninth bears the name 'protector of her lord', while the tenth is 'the raging one, who boils alive the rebel'. As the name suggests, the damned receive their final punishment here, from eight lion-headed aspects of Sekhmet '(Divine) Fury' who have to 'allot the eye of Horus to the one in the Underworld'. There follow eight 'images made by Horus' to destroy the bodies of the foe." There's an accompanying illustration in which: "... lion-headed goddesses pour fire on the bodies of the evil in sand pits." (p 50)
On the sed festival of Amenhotep III, and the statues in his funerary temple: "For Amenhotep III the incantations to appease the Furious Goddess, Sekhmet, at the end of the year became the mightiest litany ever sung, a chorus of perhaps 730 images of the goddess. These depict her as a lion-headed woman holding the sceptre of flourishing and the sign of life, in half of them seated, in the other half standing." (p 150)
Caption on p 32: "Stela showing a woman and her daughter offering to a lion-headed goddess named in the hieroglyphic inscription as Mestjet, 'eye of Ra'. This is the only evidence for the name, but the depiction of the 'eye of Ra' as lion-headed goddess is widely attested."
____
Quirke, Stephen. The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt. Thames and Hudson, London, 2001.
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Date: 2009-07-17 03:52 pm (UTC)Nice stela. Apparently the Goddess is named as Henut Mestjet, "Mistress of Mestjet". "Mestjet" is either a place, though it doesn't seem to have the determiner for city, as far as I can tell (it's pretty hard to make out in the photo), and I can't locate a place with this name, or the feminine form of the word for "offspring"; hence the name would be something like "Mistress of the Daughter". The word occurs notably in the Pyramid Texts, utterance 263, in which the king states "I am ferried over to the eastern side of the sky, and my sister is Sothis, my offspring [mstjwt] is the dawn-light [dwat]."
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I might add Henut-Mestjet to the Encyclopedia.